Me, the New York Times and D&D

I wrote this feature story for the New York Times Books section "In a Chaotic World, Dungeons & Dragons Is Resurgent: The role-playing game has made a surprising return to mainstream culture." (published online Nov. 13, 2019; on print Nov. 15). 

Hollywood, ditch the childhood nostalgia trip

I had a piece in USA Today today, about Hollywood and Madison Avenue resurrecting dead franchises --- Battleship, Transformers, Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, GI Joe, The Lego Movie, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Muppets Most Wanted, Peanuts -- from the hoary childhoods of Gen Xers. Yes, the movies have been busy trolling the deep sea waters of our collective nostalgia for childhood media. Seeking the next franchise, they dredge up another toy or TV show to see whether new life can be breathed into it for another generation's pleasure.

Read the rest of the oped on the USAToday website.

Red Sox beards vs. Dwarf beards from The Hobbit

Who is Fili and who is Napoli? Balin vs. Buchholz? Ori or Ortiz?

Here's a "Beard Blueprint" --- my guide to the Red Sox vs. Hobbit dwarf beards.

According to The Hobbit, Thorin Oakenshield, head honcho of the dwarven company, had the longest beard. He also wore a sky blue hood with a large silver tassle. On the World Champion of American and Canada Red Sox squad, known to wear Navy blue war helmets and caps, I'd give Fullest Beard Award to Mike Napoli, Grayest and Wisest Beard to David Ross, Wildest Beard to Jonny Gomes and Creepiest Leprechaun Beard medal to Clay Buchholz. (For those making the Gandalf = Manager comparison, Sox skipper John Farrell resisted the urge to get all hirsute on us.) 

Yes, these beards rule. But I can't help but think it's a shame that Ortiz wouldn't weave into his whiskers some silver or gold bling, or that Pedroia wouldn't let his grow into a great braided loop a la Bombur.

Note: Since this chart, some of the Sox beards have gotten even longer. And weider. And wilder. 

The Original D&D Gets a New Deluxe Edition

by Ethan Gilsdorf

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) may be approaching its 40th birthday next year, and rapidly losing younger players to the irresistible eye-candy of digital gaming. But in one particular sector, the role-playing game business is still booming: Older gamers like me.

I grew up playing D&D, religiously, back in the Reagan Administration. My original "Monster Manual," "Dungeon Master Guide" and sack of polyhedral dice are still precious to me. Lucky for me, I hung onto my trove of rule books that were still covered with a layer of Cheetos dust. Other old-school games weren't so lucky. ("Thanks, Mom, for giving my stuff to Goodwill when I went off to college!") Now all grown up, and sometimes with children of their own, these gamers miss that place that face-to-face dice-rolling and storytelling experience played in their lives.

But fear not, old-school roleplaying games (RPGs) are back, one reissue at a time.

Wizards of the Coast (WotC), the company that owns the D&D brand, has embarked on a new campaign in the past year to recapture older gamers whose magic-users and paladins slayed many an orc and beholder and pillaged many a graph-paper-charted land. All year longWotC has been reprinting new editions of ancient tomes from the heyday of tabletop role-playing games. On November 19, the granddaddy of them all arrives: a deluxe edition of The White Box, the original D&D set (aka OD&D) first published by Tactical Studies Rules, or TSR, Inc, back in 1974. (In a Wired.com exclusive, a new photo of the final product prototype is pictured here.)

The White Box "was the very first roleplaying game, introducing concepts that have persisted throughout later editions," said Liz Schuh, director of publishing and licensing for D&D. "Many of our players have strong emotional connections to our classic products."

They better. This new White Box retails for $149.99.

All this nostalgia comes as D&D hits "middle age." In 2014, D&D, the first-ever commercially-available role-playing game, turns 40. Next year also brings (barring any delays) the release of the game's next iteration, D&D Next.

Is all this product retread a crass commercial move on the part of WotC, or a genuine desire to re-connect gamers in their forties, fifties and even sixties to their beloved dungeon-crawls pasts?

Whatever the interpretation, this is some powerful Spell of Nostalgia that WotC is casting. Go ahead, resist. Roll a saving throw versus

The campaign began last year, with new limited-editions of the 1st Edition rulebooks: the beloved AD&D "Monster Manual" (1977), "Player's Handbook" (1978), and "Dungeon Master’s Guide" (1979). Then, in January, WotC launched dndclassics.com, a site allowing oldbies to download in PDF format hundreds of forgotten and out-of-print gaming products, from the legendary 1978 module D3: Vault of the Drow to a 1981 edition of the D&D Basic Rulebook. Also released earlier this year: two volumes of compilations of classic adventures including one called "Dungeons of Dread" that features favorites like "Tomb of Horrors" and "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks." Second edition core rulebook "Premium" reprints came out in in May. Of course, official D&D merch --- from T-shirts, belts and iPhone cases --- is also being hawked. All of these products are replicated down to the last "to hit" chart and goofy drawing of kobolds, and gelatinous cubes (just testing you: gelatinous cubes are invisible).

That "White Box" facsimile set includes the original three OD&D booklets (Men & Magic; Monsters & Treasure; Underworld & Wilderness Adventures) plus the four supplements (Greyhawk; Blackmoor; Eldritch Wizardry; Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes); a packet of "reference sheets"; and 10 funky-looking (but not historically accurate) dice. In a nod to the OD&D's original brown wood-grain cardboard box, it's all housed in a fancy engraved wooden case. The booklets' interior art looks the same, but the box's cover modern fantasy art (see photo) might annoy purists.

Original "white box" sets are rare, and can sell for $500 or more on eBay. With the reprints, anyone can own a piece of D&D history. Sort of.

Game designer James M. Ward, a veteran TSR employee who wrote the games Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha, and co-authored the core rulebook Deities & Demigods, took a more skeptical view towards WotC's decision to release items from the game's golden age. "Just think of the profit for releasing something they didn’t have to pay for or edit," Ward said. "It’s a move to make lots of money considering consumers are really liking the idea of old style material."

From the tabletop resurgence that’s been happening over the past few years, it’s clear that older gamers miss the dice-rolling and face-to-face interaction of an analog dungeon crawl. Even the the original TSR brand had been rebooted (not by Gygax's heirs or Wotc) and has released a publication, aptly named Gygax Magazine, in the spirit of the old Dragon and White Dwarf magazines. GenCon, Pax and Pax East prove there's an audience for non-digital entertainment. Older school-style RPGs such Pathfinder, from rival company Paizo Publishing, routinely outsells the last version of the D&D, the much-maligned 4th edition, released in 2008.

This "Old School Renaissance" is a welcome resurgence for people like Tim Kask, the first employee TSR ever hired and former editor of "Dragon" magazine. Kask and other older gamers maintain that newer iterations of D&D stripped out all the fun. "The game got so tabulated and charted that people forgot to ask questions," he said. "I think what has been ruled to death is that sense of wonderment, of not exactly knowing what is around the next corner."

So it makes sense that WotC also hopes some of the gamer will find their way back to a purer form of D*&D -- namely, the storytelling and mystery. "When you lose that, roleplaying," Kask said, D&D "becomes just killing at the zoo.” 

If Wizards of the Coast wants to take old gamers like me on a journey down memory lane -- or back into memory's dungeon -- I can't complain. Maybe I'll never play that fancy White Box edition. In fact. I'm pretty wedded to my AD&D rule set from the 1980. But just to hold these new/old tomes, and flip through them, and roll the dice again ... Ahhh. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, D&D's co-creators, may be dead, but their legacy of Doritos-eating, dice-rolling and bantering around some basement table lives on. Hopefully, with these D&D reissues, enough younger players will also find their way to that experience.

So even if your original DM's Guide got tossed back in the Reagan Administration, you can game again, and play whatever version of D&D you like.

"From my way of thinking," James M. Ward said, "nothing was lost."

[A version of this post appeared on Wired.com 09.24.13 as "At Nearly 40 Years Old, the Original D&D Gets a New Deluxe Edition"]

How D&D changed my life and the life of Brian "Clerks" O'Halloran

I had a great time at the Boston Festival of Indie Games, geeking out and waxing nostalgic with Brian "Clerks" O'Halloran about how D&D changed (and warped) our lives and saved our asses.

Our slide-lecture / unreheased stand-up comedy talk was officially called:

"Back in the Dungeon – A conversation with Brian O’Halloran and Ethan Gilsdorf on how D&D changed their lives"

Digital gaming all began with graph paper dungeons, a handful of dice and the Monster Manual. Join actor Brian O’Halloran (“Dante Hicks” in Clerks) and writer and critic Ethan Gilsdorf (author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks) as they geek out about the importance and impact of Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs and tabletop games on the gaming industry, and how these old-school games changed their lives for good, not evil (mostly). There’ll also be giveaways of Ethan’s book and other goodies We’ll end with a Q&A, book signing, and autograph session immediately following the event.

Thanks Brian and thanks BostonFIG.

A kid who brings miniature worlds to life

NATICK — Sometimes, the world can seem overwhelming. Overbearing. If only you were tiny enough to build a house out of cards and climb inside, or escape to a miniature treehouse suspended between stalks of broccoli.

Or better yet, just fly away. Fold a giant paper airplane, then grasp its thin fuselage for dear life and sail across a field into summertime.

Such is Zev Hoover’s fanciful photographic take on reality. His arresting images evoke a wonderland of imaginary environments, built from f-stops and pixels, and hinting at characters with secret stories to tell.

Hoover’s work, which he posts on the photo sharing site Flickr using the handle “Fiddle Oak” (a play on “Little Folk”), has caught fire across the Internet. He has been profiled in the media and on design and photography blogs. On Monday, he will fly to New York to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America Live” webcast.

One post touting his “surreal photo manipulations” has received 108,000 Facebook likes.

“Maybe a million people saw it,” said the slightly stunned Hoover, who is only 14.

COLM O’MOLLOY FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

“He’s enjoying this little ride,” said his father, Jeff. “But he’s familiar with Andy Warhol’s idea of 15 minutes of fame and realizes this may be transitory.”

The skinny teen deadpanned, “If I was older, it wouldn’t make as good of a story.”

But it’s Hoover’s talent that has captured imaginations. A film production company contacted him about designing a movie poster. He has been approached by a publisher for a potential narrative photo textbook project. Nikon World magazine asked him to contribute a photo. A lens manufacturer sent him a free lens, saying only: “Take some pictures with it.”

No doubt he will. Plenty of his peers would be happy playing soccer or video games, but not Hoover. He needs to be creating. “I get anxious if I’m not doing something,” he said, sitting outside his family’s Natick home this week. “What’s next?”

His series of “Little Folk/Fiddle Oak” images began during a walk in the woods with sister, Aliza. He remembers thinking, “Oh, wouldn’t little people be cool?” Crouching near the ground, he imagined seeing the world from their perspective. He felt the miniature genre had never been done in photography — “at least not very well.”

“There’s a fine line to walk between having it be too abstract and having it be too cheesy-obvious,” he said.

He performs his sleight of hand in Photoshop, which he taught himself via Internet tutorials.

Read the rest of the front page Boston Globe story. For a photo gallery of Zev's work, look here.

I'm on PBS's "Off Book" to discuss D&D

I was asked to appear in this PBS Off Book program and jabber about the importance of D&D. Sure, I can do that.

Why Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion effects were more real than CGI

The death of stop-motion animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen raises questions about the future of special effects, writes Ethan Gilsdorf. In the good old days, it did not take so much to trick the eye.

"There comes a point where people will reject digital effects and want movies where we actually did something in real space, and real time.” 

That's a quote from a film director perhaps the least likely to decry computer-generated special effects: Peter Jackson. Interviewed for the 2011 documentary Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan, Jackson said, essentially, that as digital special effects in movies become increasingly advanced, we'll crave the real even more. Real, as in "real" fake -- physical puppets of gorillas and T-Rexes, Medusas and animated statues, not ones made from pixels. Real, as in physical models manipulated by hand and filmed one frame at a time, not rendered in some fancy computer program.

But Jackson's comment about a movie being something that happens "in real space, and real time" feels surprising, if not ironic. The director most known for creating miniature models and sets (and so-called giant miniatures, or "bigatures") for The Lord of the Rings, and seamlessly mixing them with digital trolls and elves, later turned away from the "real" miniatures he used in that trilogy. In his last film,The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Jackson finally and fully embraced digital effects. It's a film in which nary a miniature or puppet exists.

Now, the death on May 7 of stop-motion animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen poignantly brings these issues of real and fake, analog and digital, info focus. Harryhausen's passing represents the end of an era. It closes a crucial chapter in special effects history. It's also a kind of turning point in film technology. From here on out, it's too late to return to the analog.

If you don't know who Harryhausen was, you've probably seen his work. The master animator is best known for breathing life into giant, writhing serpents, sword-wielding skeletons, and marauding dinosaurs in such fantasy adventure and monster movies as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad(1958), Mysterious Island (1961), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and Clash of the Titans (1981). Harryhausen was an innovator, and in many ways the father of the modern special effects craft and industry.

Harryhausen's trademark action sequences featuring animated model figurines -- always pictured interacting with, or more often, fighting with human foes, or crushing them, or biting them in half or flying away with them -- might seem clunky and old-fashioned when measured by today's standards. But in their day, the effects Harryhausen pioneered were cutting-edge. He painstakingly filmed his "creatures" frame by frame. The process was exhausting: The 4 minute, 37-second skeleton and human fight sequence from Jason and the Argonauts reportedly took four and a half months to photograph and Harryhausen had to readjust and film around 184,800 movements of the puppets.

Then, using his patented "Dynamation" technique, those skeletons and serpents could interact on screen with actors in a remarkable realistic way. The Dynamation process combined foreground and background footage by photographing miniatures in front of a rear-projection screen. Sometimes, he shot sequences through a partially-masked glass pane. Live footage would later be superimposed on the masked portion of the frame, and voila, the creature or creatures seemed to exist in the midst of "real" human-scaled action, or even appear to move in front of and behind "live" elements. Harryausen also carefully controlled lighting and color balance to make sure the image quality of his animated sequences matched the quality of the live action. His effects were more convincing than the standard use of optical printing and mattes. This was before green screen, folks.

Read the rest of my essay for BoingBoing

iTunes turns 10 and I long for my vinyl

iTunes turns 10 and I long for my vinyl

First, we had vinyl, audio’s standard for decades. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s, the audio cassette rose in popularity, and we bid adieu to the cultural relevance of our record collections (not to mention our 8-track cartridges). The 1990s brought the next battle of the format wars, the compact disc, music storage’s next evolutionary stage. Then came the Internet, and the advent of Napster and online music distribution. And now, the reigning champions, the MP3 and iTunes, which effectively made every previous format obsolete, and completed music’s journey from actual object to ethereal digital presence.

As the iTunes Store celebrates its 10th anniversary this week — and the folks at Apple have their birthday cake and eat it too — I’ve been thinking about how the revolutionary media player, library and sales portal has upturned the way we consume media.

What began as a way to download and play music — legally — has become the new standard for buying, playing, and organizing our electronic A/V passions. We’ve come to expect instant access to content. We see a song or TV show or movie, we buy it, and we watch it or play it or listen to it in mere moments.

As the folks at Apple have their birthday cake and eat it too, I’ve been thinking about how the revolutionary media player, library and sales portal has upturned the way we consume media.

In the decade since it launched, the iTunes Store has become not only music’s biggest retailer, it’s also captured two-thirds of all TV show and movie sales. In the first quarter of 2013, the service recorded $2.4 billion in revenue.

Together, iTunes and the iTunes Store represent the most important media innovation since the Internet.

But in marking the anniversary and thus reflecting on music’s fickle format history this week, I’ve also become extremely nostalgic for my old media consumption habits. I even miss CDs.

Yes, those silvery digital objects. When CDs usurped records and cassettes, their groove-less surfaces seemed to reflect the impersonal computer-age future. They were reviled by audiophiles, who found the sonic quality inferior and the quiet playback eerie. A laser reads the music? Where are the pops and scratches? The clunk of the needle? It made no sense.

CDs were also denounced for shrinking album art from the LP’s 12-by-12 inch canvas to a roughly five-inch square postage stamp. (Though cassettes were even worse.)

But now, in light of iTunes, the compact disc seems old-school. Retro-cool. Even a savior: At least the format had cover art and liner notes. And fragile and annoying as those plastic jewel cases were (are), it was kind of nice to see your music collection neatly organized on shelves.

Your music collection used to occupy a physical space. Remember that?

Read the rest of this essay at WBUR's Cognoscenti

What's up with all those movies based on fairy tales?

PERSPECTIVE

Hollywood’s Grimm obsession:

Why grown-ups embrace the promise of happily ever after, now more than ever.

[originally appeared in the Boston Sunday Globe, MARCH 24, 2013]

Angelina Jolie in "Maleficent," due in theaters next year. (PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER KRAMER/AP/NBC)

FEE-FI-FO-FUM,I SMELL THE BLOOD OF A HOLLYWOOD TREND.

After nearly a century of fairy-tale films targeted in large part at kids — starting with Walt Disney’s 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — there’s another, edgier treatment on the rise. Last year, moviegoers saw two versions of the Grimm Brothers’ Snow White story in Mirror Mirror with Julia Roberts and Snow White and the Huntsman with Kristen Stewart. Next year, Angelina Jolie will star as Sleeping Beauty’s nemesis in Malificent, and Disney is looking to release a live-action version of Cinderella directed by Kenneth Branagh. We’ve recently seen movies like Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and Jack the Giant Slayer in theaters and Grimm and Once Upon a Time on TV. The list goes on and on. What accounts for this boom in adult-sized fairy tales?

Part of the answer is that the stories and themes of the Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen never really left cineplexes — they’ve just been in better disguises. Working Girl, Pretty Woman, and Maid in Manhattan all borrowed heavily from the rags-to-riches Cinderella story. Snow White, so concerned with beauty and aging and jealousy, can be seen in countless mother/daughter rivalry plots. “We use bits and pieces of fairy tales all the time to fashion new stories, but often in ways so subtle that they escape our attention,” says Maria Tatar, chairwoman of the Program in Folklore & Mythology at Harvard University. Even Quentin Tarantino’s bloody Django Unchained, Tatar points out, draws from theSleeping Beauty tale.

The trend can be partly explained by practical concerns. After years of fantasy-themed bombs in the ’80s and ’90s (remember Legend with Tom Cruise?), the wildly successful Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies — which both started appearing in 2001 — convinced Hollywood that audiences were once again willing to suspend disbelief and embrace worlds of wizards and goblins. But with cash cows like The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien already spoken for, studios began looking to mine gold in older stories. (And since fairy tales tend to be in the public domain, they offer a bonus: no pesky author estates with which to negotiate film and toy rights.)

But I also think something deeper is going on. Maybe it’s that these sexier action-packed tales — with epic plots and gloomy themes — are finally returning to their roots.

Once thoroughly dire and dark, fairy tales were re-imagined as entertainment for kids in the 19th century. “They were moved like old furniture from the parlor into the nursery — that’s how Tolkien put it,” Tatar explains. With the arrival of the movies, the yarns became “cartoon versions of what adults once told around the fireside.” Disney, in particular, made a point of leaving out the nastiest  stuff — the child abandonment, the cannibalism, the incest. “Today,” Tatar says, “we are back in touch with the darker elements in the tales.”

And yet those terrible stories projected up on the screen can also be comforting, if only because we know their endings in our bones. The land of Real Life, located just outside the darkened theater’s doors, remains a fairly bleak place of taxes, political gridlock, and climate change. A realm of chain mail, swords, and magic spells will always be more enchanting than that.

“Fairy tales give us a burst of melodrama,” Tatar says, “confronting us with worst-case scenarios and reassuring us that there will be a happily ever after.”

In fairy tales, the evil and greedy get true punishment, not just a slap on the wrist from Congress, and the hero always overcomes his or her travails to emerge victorious, albeit a little traumatized, from the experience. With the help of his sister, Hansel managed to escape getting eaten by a witch. Compared with that, doesn’t digging out from under a mountain of credit card debt or dodging a looming foreclosure seem like child’s play?

Ethan Gilsdorf, a frequent contributor to the Globe Magazine, is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

Taken for a ride

With the new Pirates of the Caribbean out in theaters, it's clear the movie-theme park synergy is conquering our entertainment dollar

In search of movie plots, Hollywood has mined books, plays, TV shows, mythology, epic poems, even religious texts. Today, cinematic narrative is unearthed in other, less traditional places --- comic books, video games, cartoons, toy and theme parks rides.

Take "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," which opens Friday, the fourth film in the multi-billion-dollar franchise based on the 1967 Disneyland attraction featuring  "Avast, mateys!" pirate talk, skeletons at the ship's wheel, and buccaneers chasing wenches.

Why keep making feature-length adventures inspired by what are essentially elaborate, 10-minute log rides? Is Hollywood that desperate for ideas? Are audiences that unadventurous?To make money? Perhaps. Intellectual property owners do want to make money. The "Pirates" ride at Disney is a beloved institution, with name recognition. Well-executed as a movie series, the Johnny Depp juggernaut have conquered the box office, spawned spin-off novels, picture books, action figures, and video games.

But there are other forces at work here.

Newer generations of genre fans don't want merely to absorb narratives on the big screen. They want to participate in fictional worlds. Multi-platform, movie/book/video game tie-in products are built to sate this desire to experience the narrative outside the movie theater, to interact more directly with the storyline, or to help create a narrative --- whether by playing an video game, writing fan fiction or collecting tchotchkes or other fandom activities.

Movie-inspired amusement park attractions complete the cycle. Take your pick from dozens: Peter Pan to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (all based on Disney movie adaptations of classic books); Shrek to E.T. to Men in Black; Revenge of the Mummy, Jaws, to Jurassic Park. The Star Tours motion simulator attraction (now closed at US Disney parks for an upgrade and open only at Tokyo Disneyland) takes place in the "Star Wars" film universe. Warner Bros. Movie World (in Australia) has attractions based on "Batman," "Austin Powers," "Scooby Doo" and Marilyn Monroe. At Thorpe Park (in Britain), there's Saw, the world's first roller coaster based on a horror film. We've come a long way since the first roller coasters began appearing in15th century Russia.

So far, only the Walt Disney Company has the pop-cultural relevance and gravitas to get away with basing a movie on an amusement park attraction. That said, few of these adaptations have raked in pirate-like booty. Take "The Country Bears" (2002), based on the Country Bear Jamboree, both critically derided and a $35 million box office dud. Performing better was Brian DePalma's "Mission to Mars" (2000), partially inspired by the old attraction of the same name that was discontinued in the early 1990s; the EPCOT ride Mission: Space was built after the film came out and houses several of the movie props plus the rotating "gravity wheel" set. "The Haunted Mansion" (2003) also did somewhat better. ("Tower of Terror" (1997), based on the Disney-MGM Studios ride, was a made for TV movie.)

What's clear is that amusement parks have always been associated with deviance. Ever since the carnival came to town, so have carnies, serial killers, and torrid summer romances with strangers. In "Rollercoaster" (1977) --- released in Sensurround, an effect that vibrated theater seats with huge bass speakers --- Timothy Bottoms's plot to blow up a roller coaster is thwarted by ride inspector George Segal. Then here's the creepy side to those "It's a Small World" robots. In the dreadful "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park" (1978),  the '70s rock band, in full makeup, battles an evil engineer turning park-goers into mindless cyborgs. In the adult-themed Wild West amusement park of "Westworld" (1973), androids malfunction and start killing the patrons; its sequel, "Futureworld" (1976) concerns a cloning machine and a sci-fi-theme. The "Jurassic Park" movies (1993, 1997, 2001) further fueled fears of mad scientists and technology run amok, and nicely skewered the wholesome, antiseptic Disney park experience.

Of course, theme parks aren't just for cyborgs and dinosaurs; the undead also love them. Two brothers, Jason Patric and Corey Haim, are the new kids in town in "The Lost Boys" (1987), and must confront Kiefer Sutherland and his gang of teenage vampires plaguing an amusement park set on the California coast. In "Zombieland" (2009), zombie apocalypse survivors Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg hit the road in search of a safe haven, eventually landing in the "Pacific Playland" amusement park, where various rides play a role in the climactic battles.

But not all theme parks are nefarious. "National Lampoon's Vacation" (1983) begins with the lighter theme of summer vacations gone wrong. Chevy Chase drives his family cross-country to the Disney-like Walley World, only to find the park closed for repairs. Which drives Chase crazy, turning him into a BB gun-wielding psychopath. The funny kind. In the 15th James Bond installment, "The Living Daylights" (1987), the Ferris wheel at Vienna's Prater park is where Timothy Dalton scores with one of his Bond girls. In the dramedy "Adventureland" (2009), recent college grad Eisenberg (again) is stuck with a summer job at an amusement park in his hometown (bad), then falls in love (good). At least there are no zombies.

The most lucrative scenario for an entertainment mogul would be to base an entire amusement park on a single franchise. Disney began this by dividing its parks into vague "worlds," like Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, and Adventureland. The "movie studio" parks at Universal and Disney/MGM developed this concept, basing parks around various but mostly unrelated movies ("Jaws," etc). Then Universal's Islands of Adventure created mini-parks devoted to themes like Marvel super heroes, cartoons such as "0Rocky and Bullwinkle," "Jurassic Park"/dinosaurs, ancient myths, and the world of Dr. Seuss. One of these "islands," The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, has blazed a new trail by devoting itself to a single consistent, fictional world. The park opened last year, and features Dragon Challenge, a double roller coaster with intertwining tracks; a more conventional steel roller coaster called Flight of the Hippogriff; and a tour of Hogwarts Castle  called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey that ends with a broomstick ride past spiders, the Whomping Willow and Dementors. The "set" includes a restaurant, various fake storefronts and real stores where you can purchase merchandise like sugar quills, lemon drops, Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans, and your own broomstick.

It's only a matter of time before entire, giant theme parks are based on the most lucrative franchises in history: Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, Avatar. But if they build them, will fans come?

In the Boston area, there's an entrepreneur who is hoping that answer is yes. Based at Patriot Place in Foxborough, Matt DuPlessie's company 5 Wits taps into our desire to be part of a movie plot. DuPlessie's walk-through spy adventure Espionage (not affiliated with the James Bond franchise, but definitely inspired by it) opened last fall, and another attraction, 20,000 Leagues, based on Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," opened in March. Neither limits users to train car tracks or restricts their motions with seat belts; visitors walk freely through the sets to solve puzzles and, hopefully, save the day.

As the movie-theme park alliance has offered successful synergies, audiences have grown more sophisticated in their taste for special effects. The environments of the original Anaheim and Orlando Disney rides seem primitive by today's standards. Oddly, the quartet of "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies also have very little to do with the ride's original plot, such as it is, which simply evokes generic pirate-themed worlds. To fix this, the old attractions have been retro-fitted and refurbished with better lighting and audio effects. Audio-animatronic figures of Captain Jack Sparrow, his nemesis Barbossa, the squid-faced Davy Jones (all voiced by Depp, Geoffrey Rush, and Bill Nighy respectively) have been added that match the movie world more closely. Of course, the franchise branding had to be updated too; the pirate ship banner and other signage outside the Disney rides now matches the movie poster typeface and other marketing collateral.

While the digital bling of XBox Live, CGI and motion capture may have usurped the power of theme-park attractions, it turns out roller-coaster rides and haunted houses still have their nostalgic tug. They remain an outdated but nonetheless real-world way to participate in cinematic narrative. Taking a ride can still make us feel part of the movie.

As long as the movie is worth the ride.

Recently there's been talk of Jon Favreau ("Iron Man") directing a film based on the entire Disney theme park, Magic Kingdom, but no details yet on what the plot might be. Undead Mickey with assault rifle? 

I'd pay to see that.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures the Huffington Post called “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky," National Public Radio described as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

What's up with alien invasion movies?

Battlefield: Earth

When alien visitors do not come in peace

The White House was one of several iconic sites destroyed by aliens in Roland Emmerich’s 1996 film, “Independence Day.’’ (20th Century Fox via AP)

By Ethan Gilsdorf

Boston Globe Correspondent / March 11, 2011

“We’re facing an unknown enemy,’’ barks a Marine officer once the alien spacecraft have begun their assault in “Battle: Los Angeles.’’ In the film, which opens today, the attackers arrive in metallic ships. Other times, they arrive in asteroids, as in “The Day of the Triffids’’ (1962). Or they use asteroids as weapons: in “Starship Troopers’’ (1997) the Arachnids, or “Bugs,’’ from planet Klendathu launch a large space rock that flattens Buenos Aires.

But no matter the mode of transport, nothing gets our flags waving and patriotic juices flowing more than the threat of Earth’s destruction at the hands of ruthless, repugnant, anonymous aliens.

Here’s one reason: Because our angsty, modern-day wars don’t let us demonize the enemy as in decades past, it’s hard to get excited about blowing apart Iraqis and Afghans, whether in the real world or onscreen. Hence the appearance of “Battle: Los Angeles,’’ or last year’s LA-invasion “Skyline.’’ Combating hulking spacecraft and silvery foot soldiers whose weapons are surgically implanted ends up dicier than anything Al Qaeda can throw at us. In one scene, the platoon’s Nigerian medic grumbles, “[Expletive]! I’d rather be in Afghanistan.’’

Not all alien invasion movies are created equal. Earthlings might be mere bystanders in a battle between alien races: Take “Transformers’’ (2007) and its tagline “Their war. Our world.’’ Or “AVPR: Aliens vs Predator — Requiem’’ (also 2007). Watch “Invasion of the Body Snatchers’’ (1956, 1978) and you will notice the aliens don’t rub out metropolises; the Pod People colonize one citizen at a time. Or they walk unnoticed among us, as in “Men in Black’’ (1997). In the Godzilla “giant monsters’’ genre, or even “Cloverfield’’ (2008), they’re not even technically aliens, since the monsters (mostly) hatch from our atomic waste. The cartoon “Monsters vs. Aliens’’ (2009) combines these elements: A human beaned by a meteorite grows gigantic and joins forces with creatures to battle an invading alien robot.

You could argue these invasion films serve a higher cultural purpose. They can be seen as metaphors for some nameless fear — communism, viral infection, illegal immigration. Or think of these films as talismans. Directors imagine the worst, then the ruination won’t happen in real life.

But to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “War is a war is a war is a war.’’

What follows are battlefield reports from a few memorable movies where the little green men invade armada-style in a coordinated attack, unilaterally and unprovoked. They storm the beaches of, say, Santa Monica, like it’s the Normandy invasion, ray guns a-blazin’. They harvest our resources, take no prisoners, and destroy our beloved strip malls and skyscrapers. When they do, we guiltlessly circle our wagons and fight back. As in “Battle: Los Angeles,’’ there’s only one rightful response. “You kill anything that’s not human.’’

“War of the Worlds’’ (1953, 2005)

You might say H.G. Wells’s 1898 book kick-started the whole alien-invasion genre. At least two major film adaptations (and one freaky radio broadcast) have followed, transposing the battleground from London to US cities. In the 1953 film version, the setting is Southern California. A meteorite falls, and out pop the manta-like Martian ships. A friendly greeting is answered by heat rays and electro-magnetic pulses that vaporize our backyards. Even our A-bombs are useless. When all hope seems lost, it turns out the aliens have no defense against our germs. Should have had their flu shots! Weirdly, 2005 gave us three remakes: two low-budget, straight-to-video affairs, and the Spielberg-Cruise megalith that takes us on a paranoid road trip from destroyed New York through the ravaged New England countryside to Boston, all the while the tripedal aliens hot on the refugees’ tails.

“Mars Attacks!’’ (1996)

Think of “The Day the Earth Stood Still’’ (1951, remade in 2008) or “Close Encounters of the Third Kind’’ (1977). An alien ship arrives. Do we strike first or parley? Do they talk back in musical tones or English? Do they play fair? In Tim Burton’s spoof starring a Hollywood who’s-who (Jack Nicholson, Annette Bening, Glenn Close, Jack Black, Natalie Portman, and more), the conventions are overturned. When Martians surround Earth with their flying saucers, negotiations begin. But the tricksy aliens infiltrate the White House and the destruction commences. The evil invaders even redo Mount Rushmore with Martian faces. Luckily, there’s always a weakness: This time their demise is Slim Whitman, whose yodeling voice in “Indian Love Call’’ causes alien brains to explode. Makes you want to place your K-tel order today.

“Independence Day’’ (1996)

The xenophobia and hawkishness of some of these invasion dramas aside, perverse pleasure can also be found in seeing beloved cities and monuments obliterated: the Eiffel Tower, White House, Golden Gate Bridge. That’s what we get in Roland Emmerich’s alien-inundation flick. Ragtag survivors gather in the Nevada desert in a last-ditch effort — on July 4 — to plan retaliation. But first the audience is treated to the deployment of dozens of 15-mile-wide saucers whose blue energy blasts decimate some of our favorite urban vacation destinations: DC, LA, New York. Eventually, a computer virus (not the common cold) defeats the ship’s force field, and Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith prevail. Yay, Earth!

Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,’’ can be reached at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

"Not so long ago, in a galaxy not so far, far away": Hanging with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg

from the feature story by Ethan Gilsdorf in the Boston Globe

Like Tolkien and Lewis, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are British and longtime friends. Also like Tolkien and Lewis, Frost and Pegg tell stories that please them. “Paul,’’ the latest film they wrote and in which they star, opens Friday. It’s about two British geeks who leave the pop-cultural convention Comic-Con, in San Diego, on an RV excursion through the Southwest, only to take on an unexpected passenger: the title character, a gray-skinned, big-eyed, Area 51 escapee (voiced by Seth Rogen). Greg Mottola (“Adventureland,’’ “Superbad’’) directed.

“We’ve written a film that we want to watch and laugh at with our mates,’’ said Frost, in Boston last week to promote the film. Unlike the socially-awkward, aspiring science fiction writer Clive Gollings he plays in the film, the cheery Frost sported dark-rimmed glasses that self-consciously bespoke “nerd.’’ “That’s always what we have always done. You find that there are pockets of ‘us-es’ everywhere.’’

Those pockets of fanboys and fangirls will have a hard time not whispering to their theater seatmates when they spot the dozens of dorky inside jokes riffing off of “Star Wars,’’ “Star Trek,’’ “The X-Files,’’ “The Blues Brothers,’’ and nearly every fantasy or adventure film in the Steven Spielberg canon, from “Close Encounters’’ to “Raiders.’’

“The movie is very much a tribute to him,’’ said Frost, who was 10 when “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial’’ was released in 1982; Pegg was 12.

Some of the references are more “sci-fi 101,’’ said Pegg, who plays Clive’s best friend, the wannabe comic book artist Graeme Willy. That’s to make sure average moviegoers and not just hardcore genre geeks will buy tickets. “We had to make this film appeal on a broad level because it cost a lot of money. Because of Paul, really. He’s expensive. It’s like hiring Will Smith, literally, to get Paul on the screen.’’

But Pegg promised the film has plenty of obscure references, too. “It’s replete with gifts for those who know their stuff,’’ he said. “For the faithful.’’

One such nod: “Duel,’’ an early Spielberg film, is listed in red letters on the movie marquee seen toward the end of “Paul.’’ “ ‘Easy Rider’ is on double bill with that,’’ said Frost. “The street we were [shooting] on was the street where Jack Nicholson meets Peter Fonda.’’ Be on the lookout for even more abstruse references, and cameos.

In fact, geeks might bring bingo cards that replace numbers with such items as “swooning Ewok,’’ “mention of Reese’s Pieces’’ “Mos Eisley cantina music (played by country band),’’ “dialogue from ‘Aliens,’ ’’ and “bevy of metal bikini-costumed, ‘slave girl’ Princess Leias.’’ Drinking coffee in a hotel suite overlooking the Charles River, the two stressed that the point of “Paul’’ was not to ridicule those who collect samurai swords or speak Klingon (as both characters do in the film), but to celebrate them.

“We never wanted to make fun of it,’’ said Pegg. “Obviously those kind of fans are our bread and butter and helped get us where we are. We didn’t want to then turn around and say ‘Ha, ha. You big bunch of losers.’ ’’ Clive and Graeme are portrayed as mildly, and endearingly, dysfunctional and codependent, but ultimately good guys with big hearts.

Both actor-writers long ago established their geek cred. Pegg costarred with Frost in the cop-action movie spoof “Hot Fuzz’’ (2007) and the “zomedy’’ “Shaun of the Dead’’ (2004). Pegg cowrote both films and more recently voiced the character Reepicheep in “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.’’ “Young Scotty,’’ from “Star Trek’’ (2009), is his highest profile role to date. He will also star in the planned sequel. Both have acted in the forthcoming “Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn,’’ and when the Spielberg-Peter Jackson motion-capture juggernaut hits screens later this year, each of their stars will rise even higher into the dweeby firmament.

On the “Paul’’ set, they also geeked out on special effects required to bring the pot-smoking, wise-cracking space-dude to life. Rogen (“The Green Hornet,’’ “Knocked Up’’) shot a video reference version of the movie and recorded dialogue on a sound stage, but never joined the actors on location. Instead, Pegg, Frost, and the rest of the cast, which includes Jason Bateman and Kristen Wiig, acted with “a child, a small man, a ball, a stick with balls on it, some lights,’’ said Pegg. “All the way through I was thinking, this is never going to work.’’

Lining up sightlines between the eyes of humans and the yet-to-be generated CG Paul (to establish believable connections between the characters) caused the biggest headaches. “How do I know where to look?’’ Pegg said. “But it worked.’’ (“You see Ewan McGregor looking at Jar Jar Binks,’’ he added, taking a swipe at the “Star Wars’’ prequels. “He’s like looking above his head.’’)

If one geek fantasy is finally to defeat the bully, get the girl or boy, and find fame or fortune with your secret passion, then “Paul’’ fulfills the dream. Not to spoil the ending, but Willy and Gollings do become rock stars in their own realm.

Another holy grail is that geeks might get to hang with real wizards, orcs, hobbits, superheroes, or robots. For two hours, “Paul’’ brings this pipe dream closer, too.

“We always see these characters in fantasy environments. We see Gollums in Middle-earth and all the ‘Star Wars’ animations are in the ‘Star Wars’ universe,’’ said Pegg. “The context fits the sprite. But in ‘Paul,’ we wanted that character to be in an environment that was totally, literally, alien to him.

“And that makes him seem even more real, because you don’t expect to see him.’’

Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,’’ can be reached at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.